“I suffered, therefore you should too”

On solidarity, empathy and selfishness in philosophies of society and economics.

Ever encounter those people who tell your how they basically grew up in a shoebox, eat sawdust for breakfast and through hard work and their iron will they worked themselves out of it to staggering success? I have… far too many times. Somehow signaling that your a social democrat and belief in equality, eradication of poverty etc, causes people to go on these rants on how all it ever takes is hard work, and that people who think otherwise are just looking for free handouts.

Essentially their argument against a more fair society is that they suffered and were poor and thus nobody else should get a helping hand. Everybody who is poor is basically just somebody who was just too lazy to make themselves rich.

There is however a profound embarrassment in this narrative, which these self-righthous capitalist fanboys fail to see. If they grew up poor, it means they parents must have been poor. This again means their parents must have been lazy slobs who didn’t work hard enough. Not my words. That would be according to their own flawed logic. I have a feeling that if one ever suggested this, there would have been a lot of handwaving and a lot of “how dare you call my parents lazy! They did X, Y, Z and that was a lot of hard work…”

Yes, indeed and they still remained poor, so I guess they didn’t work hard enough? I guess they didn’t try hard…